If you’ve been using an app to monitor your unborn baby’s heart rate, you might want to think twice.

A leading charity is warning smartphone apps which claim to monitor the heartbeat of a baby in the womb could be harming their pregnant mums.

Elizabeth Hutton, from pregnancy and stillbirth charity Kicks Count, has appeared on BBC Breakfast calling for a ban on such apps after a mum confessed she relied on an app rather than professional medical care.

According to the Liverpool Echo, Ms Hutton warned against using the ‘dopplers’ - a type of ultrasound that uses high-frequency sound waves to measure bloodflow.

It came after brave mum Vicki McNelly, whose baby was stillborn at nine months, revealed she might have sought help sooner if she did not have a doppler.

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She said: "I had a textbook pregnancy and my midwives were really pleased with how well my pregnancy was going.

"I was really lucky, I didn't have morning sickness, I carried really well, I didn't have back pain and that kind of thing.”

But then her baby's movements changed and she knew something was wrong. She said: “I sat on my pregnancy ball in front of the door and I was looking into the garden and I knew that something was wrong.

A pregnant woman speaks to a midwife
A pregnant woman speaks to a midwife

"I knew that Evie had died. And something, I don't know what, something made me pick up the doppler to see if there was anything that I could hear.

"When I used it I could hear something, I couldn't hear a heartbeat, but I could use noises."

Vicki went to the hospital, where they told her the baby had died. But she said if she had not had a Doppler she might have sought help sooner.

She said: “If the doppler wasn't in the house I wouldn't have had a second opinion, as it were, I would have only been able to rely on my own instincts and my own reaction time.

"I think the doppler gave me a false sense of security."

Dopplers are not recommended by a number of women's health charities as they feel they offer mums-to-be "false reassurance".

But manufacturers say their guidance is clear and they should not be used as a substitute for professional medical care.

Elizabeth Hutton told BBC Breakfast: "The problem we have isn't with the device, itself. The device itself is perfectly safe to use, when used by the right people.

"But they are intended for professionals, they are prescription devices and they require training to use. So they are not something that should be used by the general public and by untrained hands.

"What the home doppler is doing is creating a barrier between the mum and her seeking medical advice because sometimes women will use it for reassurance, being reassured that they have heard their baby's heartbeat, whereas, actually hearing her baby's heartbeat doesn't actually mean the baby is well."

Manufacturers of such devices told the BBC "it was totally outrageous to relate stillbirth to the use of dopplers at home" and they are not to be used as a substitute for profession medical care or as an indication of foetal health.